1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for use in fuel dispensing equipment, and, more particularly, to a card processor adapted for integral arrangement with the fuel dispensing equipment and configured for network connectivity, and which is operative to process a card having a magnetic recording portion and an erasable/rewritable display portion comprising a reversible thermosensitive recording material.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional fueling stations employ an arrangement of user-operated fuel dispensers such as manual pumping apparatus to provide the user with the ability to initiate and control the refueling operation. It is standard for fuel dispensing kiosks to further provide the user with transaction-authorizing equipment such as a credit card interface that is adapted to read the identification data from the customer credit card and then dial into the card-issuing entity to request payment authorization for the refueling transaction. A controller for the fuel dispenser activates the fuel pump in response to a return approval code. This exchange between the user and the credit card issuer (or any similar such institution or party) encompasses the entirety of their interaction connected with the refueling transaction.
There is currently no facility at retail fueling stations that permits a vendor to communicate real-time information such as marketing and sales data to the user at the refueling point-of-sale. Limitations in conventional equipment encompass not only the inability to dynamically communicate textual information to the user, but also extends to the lack of any on-site facility to receive and display viewer-perceptible images, particularly in a manner that is correlated to user information unique to the present operator. Existing configurations only support the credit card authorization procedure and do not possess any functionality that permits a vendor (e.g., credit card company or bank) to dynamically transfer other real-time information, particularly image signals, to the user at the point-of-sale.